Sibling Rivalry
by Waris
Summary: A killer who hasn't yet reached his full height is


Tuesday  
7:30 am  
Residence of Allen Stewart  
  
Blue and red lights flashed silently against rock wall architecture and reflected eerily back and forth between panes of expensive double paned glass. An ambulance unit sat parked a few yards away from the white police car farthest away from the group of people milling about the concrete walk from a driveway to a oversized front door. The morning sun wasn't quite past the blue hue it takes on when it first breaks the horizon. It was just starting to peek over the trees surrounding a very impressive sized home as men in black uniforms and thick jackets strung yellow crime scene tape in a perimeter rectangle from the edge of the long driveway to the far edge of the property.  
  
"What've we got?"  
  
There was a cough. "White female, twenty-one years old." A man sighed and paused as he perused a blanketed lump on the ground for a moment. "Looks like a strangulation. Definitely raped. Can't be sure on actual cause of death, however obvious it looks. Have to wait for the ME's dictations."  
  
Black shoes crunched on gravel and then bent yellow blades of dead winter grass covering a well groomed and sprawling front yard landscape. The wind was biting and cold as it whipped the corners of the standard white medical drape sheet around in the officer's hand. Detective Elliot Stabler blew into his cupped black gloved hands as he crouched next to the uniformed man, his own trenchcoat flipping in the dry icy breeze. His partner in crime, ironically enough, Detective Olivia Benson stood behind and slightly to the left of him, her hands in her pockets and her hazel eyes scanning the scene as her dark gray scarf threatened to escape the confines of her buttoned wool knee-length coat.  
  
"What time was she found?" Stabler asked to no one cop in particular. He stood as the officer he was kneeling next to kept the drape sheet pulled back for Olivia to see the body clearly. He could hear other officers inside the residence speaking with a distraught parent.  
  
"The mother's on business in New Jersey. No siblings. Father's the one who found her. He left the house for work around 6:45 this morning. Exited through the door that leads right into the garage. Didn't see her until he'd pulled out and was halfway down the drive."  
  
"He didn't notice his only daughter wasn't in the house before he left?" The rather surprised question came from Olivia, her classic and identifying smooth alto voice swirling on the frozen air as she took her turn and knelt next to the young woman.  
  
The officer who'd first answered Elliot shrugged. "Says it was normal for her to be out late with friends, especially on her days off."  
  
Detective Benson carefully looked the body over. "We get her name?"  
  
"Nance Stewart."  
  
Olivia nodded and focused back on the body. The woman was lying face down but her arms were lying clear of her body and Olivia could clearly see angry red abrasions circling her slender wrists. At some point before she died, she'd been bound. There were no other injuries to the pale skin on her arms and hands meaning that Nance had either simply not fought back against her attacker or she hadn't been able to. Benson pulled the sheet back over the body after a moment and then stood to join her partner.  
  
"Looks like she was attacked from behind as she came up the walk," Stabler noted. He took in the position in which the young woman's body was lying. "Strangled her with some kind of rope or cord, then dumped on her own front yard.." He looked back up to a couple of officers standing nearby. "Are we sure this is where she died? That she wasn't killed somewhere else and then just left here?"  
  
One officer nodded. "Pretty sure. Neighbor over there," he nodded at a portly middle-aged woman talking to another officer, "..says she heard some muffled shouting around 5 this morning but it didn't last more than a couple minutes. She thought a couple was maybe just having an argument."  
  
"Interesting the father didn't hear it," Elliot commented dryly, his eyes flicking to the silhouette of the man in his living room.  
  
Olivia's eyes tracked from the young woman's body to the front door of her home and calculated the painfully short distance from one to the other as she listened to the officer relate what he'd been told. Nance's body was lying a mere 2 feet shy of her heavy wooden front doors. One eyebrow arched in an expression of professional empathy for the paralyzing fear the young woman must have felt before she died.  
  
Elliot caught that expression and turned to face her, driving his hands deeper into the pockets of his fluttering trench. "What?" he asked.  
  
Olivia paused for a moment before speaking, strands of auburn hair dusting across her forehead in the chilled morning breeze. She met her partner's gaze.  
  
"She almost made it to the door."  
  
Same day  
11:30 am  
Precinct  
  
"That was fast." Captain Donald Cragen's unmistakable bald crown rose as the man stood from where he'd been sitting when Elliot and Olivia entered the office.  
  
"Yeah, well...you'd get your ass back inside just as fast if you knew how cold it was out there," Elliot retorted before he shrugged out of his coat and draped it over the back of his swivel chair.   
Olivia did the same with her own but unlike her partner, who was still standing, dropped into her seat after unraveling her scarf. "We couldn't get much more out of the father than the cops on the scene did before we got there," she reported.  
  
"Can't really blame him," Elliot murmured as he rested his hands on the top of the back of his chair. "Guy was a basketcase."  
  
"What'd CSU find?" Detective Odafin Tutuola, affectionately called "Fin" by his precinct family, asked.  
  
It was Detective John Munch that answered. "Not much. No trace evidence around the body, nothing left at the scene that wasn't hers except for a footprint in the mud just off the walk." He slapped a file folder down on one the desks. "No fingerprints."  
  
"Doc Warner's going over the body with the proverbial fine-toothed comb now for any trace evidence on the body itself," Cragen added to the conversation. "Should know the cause of death this afternoon."  
  
"So what did you get out of dear old dad?" Fin asked Olivia and Elliot, obviously not really caring which of the two answered him.  
  
"Names, numbers mostly," Olivia said. She sat back in her chair and clasped her hands behind her head, her mind continuing to work the scene over even though it wasn't physically right in front of her anymore. "He says Nance didn't tell him where she was going when she left the house last night, but that wasn't unusual and he didn't question her about it. Didn't think anything about it either when she wasn't back by the time he left for work. Didn't hear the shouting the neighbor reported."  
  
"Not surprising," Elliot interjected. "The place was built like a tomb. Soundproofing insulation galore."  
  
"Any boyfriends? Ex's?" Cragen asked.  
  
"No 'ex'-boyfriends. One boyfriend, lives a couple of houses down the street." Elliot pulled a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his coat. "Daniel Wayward. Father says the two were close, never had any problems he knew of."  
  
"And what did the boyfriend have to say about that?" Munch pressed, crossing his arms over his suspender lined chest.  
  
"Couldn't talk to him." Olivia dropped her hands from the back of her head and leaned forward with her forearms resting on the edge of her semi-cluttered desk. "His mother says he's on a writing internship with a newspaper column in upstate Rhode Island. Both the airline he traveled on and the newspaper he's with confirm. Story checks out. He won't be back until sometime next month."  
  
"Anyone pointing the finger at dad?" Cragen asked.  
  
"His alibi checks out too," Elliot replied. "The home has hidden cameras in every room. It's a gated community so everything in every house is recorded at the security guard's shack. Dad went to bed around 9:45 last night and stayed there until he left for work."  
  
"Super," Cragen muttered. "So what you're saying is..we basically haven't got any suspects yet."  
  
Elliot and Olivia shared a 'here-we-go' look with one another. "Not until we hear from CSU again on the footprint and get Warner's report on the body," Elliot confirmed. "Nope."  
  
Thursday  
10:15 am  
County coroner's building, office of M.E. Warner  
  
By the time Olivia and Elliot received the call from Warner they had already pieced together as much about the victim as they could. Unfortunately, without any solid suspects and only a vague profile from Huang to go on, the victim was the only person they could currently concentrate on. Though almost twenty two years of age she still lived at home but according to the father she was completely independent of him and his wife, the mother. Held a job as a student teacher at a local high school teaching the 11th grade. She'd never had any run-ins with the police before, had never been the object of any incident to which the police were dispatched. The killer, as outlined by Dr. Huang, was most likely in his late twenties to early thirties. Above average intelligence. Possibly coming from a family of abusive women.  
  
"There have never been any cases like this in the past that either Munch or Cragen can remember where the victim is killed right outside their own home," Olivia commented as Elliot opened the door to the morgue for her. "At least none where the perp or anyone working with or for the perp isn't already in prison." She sighed as she shared Elliot's gaze. "We still have no suspects, not even a decent motive. Nance's murder seems completely random. We're grabbing at straws here, Elliot."  
  
Stabler nodded, just as frustrated as she. "Here's hoping Warner can make the haystack a little smaller," he said as the two of them entered the medical examiner's domain.  
  
The curly-haired dark skinned woman had indeed worked her infamous magic. "Glad you could make it, detectives," she said with a smile as she stood on one side of the steel table on which Nance's body lay.  
  
"What've you got for us?" Elliot asked, the eagerness for more leads very clear in his 100 percent New York tone.  
  
"More than I thought, thanks to CSU," Warner said. "First of all, the cause of death was asphyxiation due to strangulation due to the ligature the killer used around her neck. Whatever it was it wasn't cloth. Didn't leave any fibers behind."  
  
Benson nodded. "So it had to have something more like an electrical cord, something that wouldn't leave anything but a red mark on the skin."  
  
Warner nodded herself. "Right. Second, swab confirms she was raped before she died but I won't have the lab back with the typing until later this afternoon. Now this," She nodded at a plaster casting that had been made of the impression left in the mud near the body. "..is what's interesting. At first, when CSU brought it down, I thought we were dealing with your typical male killer."  
  
"Why's that?" Stabler questioned her.  
  
"Well because the footprint is roughly two times the size of the victim's," she reported. "Women's size 9. The print is a men's 11. If the killer was female, it was likely the print would have been about the same size, maybe smaller."  
  
"And now you've changed your mind," Olivia said, letting the sentence go out as more of a statement than a question.  
  
"The victim is above average height for her age," Warner continued. "Most twenty two year old women are anywhere between 5 feet 5 inches and 5'7'', maybe 5'9''. She," Warner nodded down at Nance's body. "..is almost 5'11''."  
  
"So whoever took her down had to have been stronger than her," Elliot contributed. "Probably taller too."  
  
"That's what I thought before I examined the body more closely," Warner said, peeling back some of the sheet to show the two what she'd found. "Now, I still believe the killer is male, but he's anything but typical." She pointed to the red abraised skin at the Nance's throat. "Whatever he used to strangle her left a very clear abrasion on the skin and the mark is solid meaning whatever he used didn't slip around. She either didn't struggle or couldn't slip her fingers under it. Again, typical. Then I noticed the way the mark is angled." She traced a latex gloved finger along the red mark, following it from the center of Nance's throat to where it dropped slightly downwards.  
  
"Layman's terms, doc," Elliot said.  
  
"When the cord was pulled tight enough to cut off her oxygen flow, it was yanked downwards, not upwards as you'd expect with someone taller than her, or even her same height. But the killer was certainly still stronger than her otherwise she'd have had the leverage on her side to break the hold." Warner looked up from the body as the two detectives in front of her put two and two together.  
  
Olivia's eyes widened a little bit as the light went on. "Killer's male but shorter than she is...yet he's strong enough to strangle her from behind and his shoe size is still two sizes larger."  
  
"Young men either just finishing or still going through puberty generally do have enlarged extremities, especially in the feet and hands," Warner added, looking from Olivia to Elliot.  
  
Olivia met Elliot's eyes, shaking her head in wonder. "We've been looking in the wrong place." Warner's findings had just blown most of Huang's 12 point profile to hell.  
  
Elliot nodded, completely understanding. Before now they'd been thinking along the lines of male colleagues, past relationships, that sort of thing. Before they'd come here they'd even questioned   
some of the male teachers at the high school where she student taught before classes had started. All their efforts had led to absolutely nothing. No clear motive, no possbile suspects. Nadda. That is, until they'd come here.  
  
Elliot looked down at his partner as the two left the morgue. "So, Liv," he started as they got to the car and he unlocked both doors from the driver's side. They got in and both doors mutedly slammed closed almost simultaneously.  
  
He looked over at her as he started the car. "Ready to go back to school?"  
  
[End Part One]

Same day (Thurs.)  
2:30 pm  
West Morris Central High School  
  
Elliot snapped his sleek cell phone shut as he and Olivia got out of the car in the high school's modest visitor parking lot. "That was Cragen. Munch and Fin are heading up to the university," he reported.  
  
"Why?" Olivia asked, her brow furrowing in mild confusion as she closed her door.  
  
"One of Nance's friends just heard about her death. Called the precinct, said five nights ago he noticed a man harassing her on campus just outside the library. Might have been suspicious, he   
didn't know for sure but wanted to help."  
  
Olivia went silent and thought for a minute as they trudged across the lot and reached the bottom of the concrete stairs that led to the double front doors. "That would have made it Saturday," she noted. "What would she be doing on a university campus on a Saturday night?"  
  
"That's what they're looking into," Elliot said as he slid his phone into one of his trenchcoat's inside pockets. "Most likely researching something for class this week," he added. "Kid said he'd meet them there."  
  
Olivia nodded in silent acknowledgement as they reached the front doors. The building was old and colonial style, typical for this part of the city. The deep red brick stood out in attractive contrast next to the white pillars in front and the white trim of the rain gutters that lined the perfectly triangular roof. Three or four yellow school buses lined the curb in front, engines off as they waited for their cargo.  
  
"Your timing is impeccable Elliot," Olivia quipped ruefully as the doors shut behind them and she glanced around her.  
  
The hallway was streaming with kids of different size and race. School had just finished for the day and the halls were congested with the youngsters as they made for freedom and a day void of the assigned homework they'd been given. Olivia and Elliot had to press themselves to the wall to walk anywhere down it as typically oblivious teenagers pushed through the crowd. Some were attentive enough to their environment however to notice the two serious looking adults, one with a shiny police badge visible at the waistband of her black pants. It wasn't unusual to see security personnel in a New York city high school, especially this day in age, however the two adults in the school now were not the officers employed by the school. The students' young eyes were wide and filled with questions and rumors Elliot knew would circulate around the cafeteria the next day. As if what the two of them were about to tell the school wouldn't hit them hard enough.  
  
Olivia was quick to notice the glances she received, and where on her body those glances were concentrated, and she wisely swung her coat shut, buttoning it halfway down to conceal both her badge and the holstered semi-automatic pistol a little farther back on the same hip.  
  
"Couldn't have picked a more conspicuous time to be in a place packed with the most gossip hungry age group of the human race," she said, her face deadpan as she and Elliot made their way towards a door over which hung a sign that read 'Main office.'  
  
Elliot didn't miss a beat in his reply. "Did it just for you, Liv," he said, the smirk on his angular face almost undetectable.  
  
The banter stopped as the two of them entered the office. A few kids were inside, most of them looking to be seniors as they stood under the 'Scholarship applications' window on the far end of the office. Last minute announcements regarding extra-curricular activities such as sports team practices and night schooling could be heard in the hallway outside as the two detectives headed for the secretary's desk.  
  
The woman sitting there was short and slender and a pleasant smile graced her oval face as she stood and greeted them. "Can I help you?"  
  
"Like to speak to the principal if we could," Elliot said, wanting to leave his and Olivia's occupation out of it at least while there were still kids in the office. He rested one arm on the nearly chest high desk separating them from her part of the office.  
  
"He's currently in a meeting with the superintendent," she informed them. "I'll do what I can for you until he's finished if you don't mind waiting," she offered kindly. "Is this a parent matter?" she asked, looking at them each in turn.  
  
The secretary was too nice for her own good and Olivia knew they wouldn't get far speaking with her. 'The hell with discreet,' Benson thought to herself and unclipped her badge from her waistband. "Detective Olivia Benson, this is my partner Detective Elliot Stabler. NYPD, Special Victims Unit." She offered the secretary one of her famous 'let's just get this done as quickly as possible' smiles as she concealed her badge again.  
  
"We'd really like to speak with the principal."  
  
The principal was a tall and proper man of about fifty-five. He was balding on top but not yet graying and his perfectly round glasses fit his long face perfectly. The nameplate on his desk identified him as Ash Mason. "Miss Stewart doesn't teach on Tuesdays," he said in response to Elliot's question regarding whether or not he knew where Nance had been that day, why she hadn't been at school.  
  
Mason sat behind his desk and steepled his fingers in front of him as his elbows rested on the rich wood of the desk. "Her schedule was Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays," he told them. "Now, she didn't show up on Wednesday though. She didn't call in to say she was ill, either, which is unusual for her. She's not one to no-call, no-show like that, she's very responsible." He looked from one detective to the other, a worried expression on his face. "What is this about detectives? Is Miss Stewart in some kind of trouble with the police that I should be aware of?"  
  
Olivia shared a look with Elliot. It was obvious that news of Nance's murder hadn't yet reached her colleagues. Olivia crossed her legs and laced her fingers together as she looked back at the man across the desk and tilted her head slightly to one side. "Principal Mason, Nance Stewart's been murdered." She broke into it gently but bluntly. No sense beating around the bush. "Her body was found by her father on the front lawn of their home early Tuesday morning."  
  
The man was silent for several minutes as the news seeped into his psyche. He leaned to one side of his chair and rested his chin in his right hand, one finger over his lips. "My God," he breathed. He slipped his wire frame glasses from his face with his left hand and rubbed his eyes.  
  
"Sir, we know what a shock this is coming as, and we're sorry for your loss," Olivia began again carefully. "But we're going to need your help if we're to catch the person responsible."  
  
Elliot sat quiet while Olivia did the talking. It was generally best if she covered the shock value aspect of meetings such as this. He was best left to the questions that suspects refused to answer. It wasn't that Olivia couldn't handle herself in the interrogation room...it was that Elliot didn't do well with his expression of compassion outside the circle of people he knew well.  
  
After a minute Mason straightened himself and slid his glasses back into place. "You'll excuse me if I seem a little rattled by this," he apologized. "But Nance Stewart was very well respected among the teachers at this school and her rapport with the students was outstanding. This will be hard for them as well as the rest of the staff."  
  
"Of course," Olivia offered a sympathetic smile.  
  
"I'll help in any way that I can, detectives. The resources of this facility are at your disposal."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Mr. Mason, you said Nance was very well liked here." It was Elliot who spoke now. Now that the emotional stuff was over, he could safely assert himself again. "Did she have any enemies that you know of? Anyone that maybe didn't like her as much as everyone else?"  
  
Mason mulled the question over in his mind for a second or two, rubbing his top lip with one finger as he did so. "No one immediately comes to mind," he finally announced. "But I don't see her with the students as frequently as the teacher she team taught beside, Anna Franklin. She's still in the building if you'd like to speak with her. The faculty usually doesn't leave until close to 3:30."  
  
"Thank you," Olivia said.  
  
The three of them stood and Ash showed them the door. They didn't speak as he led them through the halls and stairways of the school to the room of Nance's teaching partner. They did learn on the way that Nance taught A.P. European History. Not much help to them now, but Elliot jotted it down nonetheless. Nothing was too small a clue.  
  
Anna took the news even harder than the principal had. Several minutes had passed before she could even speak. She plucked a tissue from the box on her desk and wiped her eyes. She thought over the question Olivia asked, it being the same one Elliot had asked the principal.  
  
"Every student here liked Nance," she reported, her voice thick with the tears she'd just shed. "The altercations she had, if any at all, were small, usually about missed assignments and whatnot."  
  
"Can you remember any of those altercations? Anything that took place with the last week or two?" Olivia pressed cautiously. She was sitting in a student desk across from Anna. Light was shining through the small windows onto the blackboard, making whatever was written there impossible to see.  
  
Anna sniffed and wiped the tip of her nose. "Um...there was one. Last...Friday I think it was. Student was trying to get her to give him a passing grade on his last test so that he wouldn't get kicked off the basketball team. Jason Doxey. He was, ahh, he was up for captain for the upcoming season."  
  
"Did she give it to him?" Elliot asked, it being only his second question of the day so far.  
  
The teacher shook her head. "No. She wasn't a pushover like that. She treated the kids just like the regular faculty here did. Most appreciated that. Some didn't."  
  
"Jason must've been pretty upset that she wouldn't pass him," Olivia commented slyly.  
  
Anna shrugged. "Not terribly, no. He was frustrated, yes, but nothing what I would consider beyond what's normal for a teenaged boy."  
  
"Is Jason in any of the periods during the day that you teach?" Benson asked.  
  
"Yes, he's in my second period."  
  
"Was he in class on Tuesday morning?"  
  
There was a pause on the teacher's end. "Now that you mention it..." she set her tissue on the desk and pulled open a drawer. She produced a roll book then as if to help her memory thumbed back to Tuesday's sheet. "No, he wasn't. Apparently his mother called in that morning to excuse him, said he was ill."  
  
Olivia raised her eyebrows and looked up at her partner, who was already writing it down. She looked back at the woman across from her. "Mrs. Franklin, we're going to need to talk with Jason. Do you have a home address or phone number for him?"  
  
Anna shook her head. "The office keeps those records," she stated. "Student files. The secretary should be able to get them for you."  
  
Same day  
4:15 pm  
Residence of Jason Doxey  
  
"Nice of you to jump in back there," Olivia commented dryly as Elliot stopped the car on the curb across the street from the address the school office had given them. "Y'know if you want I can just take this investigation myself, bring the perp down single-handedly."  
  
"Liv," Elliot's voice was warning. He unbuckled his seat belt and climbed out of the dark blue unmarked sedan.  
  
"Elliot, you barely got two sentences out," his partner reminded him as she got out herself. They began walking across the pavement but slowed as they waited for a car to pass them fully before crossing the rest of the street. "You're the one with the family here, if either of us is going to be drilling this kid in there it should be you."  
  
"Look, Liv, I barely know how to deal with my own kids right now," Elliot said a bit testily as they walked up the driveway. "You think I'm going to know how to handle someone else's?"  
  
That kept Olivia quiet as Elliot reached out and rang the doorbell. She knew he'd been having some mild problems at home recently but his comment had just revealed that perhaps things were a little more serious than she'd suspected. She wisely kept her opinions to herself as they were warily welcomed by the mother into the small home.  
  
Same day  
5:00 pm  
  
The sun was beginning to set as Olivia and Elliot left the home of Jason Doxey, casting deep red and orange hues over everything its rays touched as it descended. They climbed somewhat tiredly into the car and headed down the rush hour clogged streets back to the precinct. The questioning had gone smoothly enough, even if it had been somewhat disappointing. Though home for the day, Jason had an alibi for the time that Nance had been killed outside her home. So far it checked out, but something about the kid himself made Olivia uneasy.  
  
"That seem at all odd to you?" she asked Stabler about the interview as she got comfortable in her seat for the drive.  
  
"Was like he didn't care that his teacher'd just been strangled," Elliot agreed.  
  
Olivia rested her elbow on the ledge of the car window and watched the scenery crawl by. Jason's face was flat throughout the entire session. "Or like he wanted us to think he didn't care," she   
commented. At that moment her cell phone rang. She sat up straighter so she could extricate it from her coat pocket and slid the small antenna up.  
  
"Benson." She was quiet as she let the person on the other end do all of the talking. The one-sided conversation lasted a good 5 minutes before Olivia slipped the phone back into her pocket.  
  
"That was Warner," she announced. "The swabs from Nance have come back. We have a little more to go on."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Whoever raped her's a non-secretor," she said relayed what the M.E. had just told her. "Basically a rare genetic allele that means the person won't leave his blood type in any bodily fluids except for blood. Saliva, urine, or seminal fluid."  
  
"If Doxey's alibi doesn't clear..." Elliot started.  
  
Olivia nodded, following his lead. If the kid's alibi didn't check out, they'd need to follow this new lead with him and it wouldn't be easy. "That's not all. Warner says she's positive that Nance wasn't raped anywhere close to the time she was killed. Stains on her skin had crusted and some of it had partially rubbed off on her clothes." Olivia shook her head. Sometimes the cruelty of some of the people in the this city disgusted and scared even her...and she was close to having seen it all.  
  
"Asshole rapes her, lets her dress or forces her to, then takes back home," she said almost to herself.  
  
Elliot joined her in piecing together more of the killer's emerging MO. "So he drives her home, lets her go, lets her think she's going to get away, then changes his mind and kills her just before she reaches her own front door."  
  
Olivia's fist clenched into a fist and she thumped the back of it semi-forcefully against her car window. Her anger at the killer was heating. "Son of a bitch."  
  
Same day  
5:30 pm  
Precinct

  
  
The rest of the drive passed in contemplative silence from both detectives. Warner's findings made it clear that SVU was now dealing with someone who had meticulously thought out this kill before he'd acted. He hadn't acted on a mere whim. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, to whom. He knew when, he'd thought of where, and he'd planned how. They both knew that Huang was already working overtime in his attempts at uncovering the 'why'.  
  
By the time they reached the precinct, Olivia was more than ready to call it a day. Fin and Munch had tracked down and met up with the friend at the university but while what he said had been helpful, they'd had little luck in finding the man who'd allegedly been harassing Nance Stewart that Saturday night. Afterwards they'd spoken to a few of her closest friends but they stated that she hadn't been with them on Monday night or into Tuesday morning. They hadn't seen her since Saturday. Huang had put a more detailed profile together, changed drastically from his first draft, but without multiple victims to compare, the motive behind the murder was still no more than a guess. Not even an educated one at this point.  
  
It was nearly quarter to 7 before Olivia finally felt she could leave. She, Elliot, and Cragen were the only ones still there. Most of the lights in the office save the lamp on Elliot's desk and the light in Cragen's office had been turned off. "You going to stay much later?" She looked across the office at Elliot as she pulled on her brown leather gloves and draped her scarf over the back of her neck.  
  
Elliot had his feet propped up on one corner of his desk, a pen in one hand, a manila folder in the other. "Yeah," he replied absently before blinking and looking up. "Wanna go over our little chat with Jason again. Something about his mannerisms is just rubbin me wrong."  
  
"Okay." Benson offered her partner a half-smile as she pulled her car keys from a desk drawer. "Don't work too late," she said.  
  
Stabler jerked his head once in response. "Take care, drive safe," he said, flicking the edge of her wool coat with the capped end of his pen as she passed his desk. "See you tomorrow."  
  
"Night," came her reply as she left the office.  
  
The night was completely clear and extremely cold but at least there was no wind. Olivia's breath puffed white and drifted lazily away from her face as she unlocked her car door and slid into the driver's seat. She locked her doors again after she was in, a habit she'd picked up after her unsettling encounter with Richard White 4 years earlier. She turned the heater on high and blew into her hands while she waited for her windshield to defrost enough so that she could see out of it.  
  
She was so lost in her thoughts about their current case that she jumped when her cell phone rang. She dug it out of her pocket. "Benson."  
  
It was Elliot on the other line. "How far away from the precinct are you?" he asked, sounding hopeful that she hadn't been able to get too far from the area yet.  
  
Olivia frowned. "I haven't left, I'm still parked outside it," she said. "Why?"  
  
Elliot paused. "Cragen just got a phone call from police in Chester," he said. "We got another one."  
  
[End Part Two]  


  


Same day (Thurs.)  
7:30 pm  
Residence of Stacy Morin  
  
Olivia and Elliot stood over the body as the scene from Tuesday morning repeated itself in front of them. She was very similar in appearance to Nance. Young, slender, blonde hair, and her body was lying face down near the front door. In fact this victim was even closer to it than Nance had been to hers. This victim's fingers were brushing the metal weather stripping on the bottom of the door.  
  
"This your perp?" The question came from the officer holding open the body bag in preparation to get the woman's body into it.  
  
"Same MO."  
  
Elliot looked over at his partner as she stared down at Stacy's body. The normally collected woman seemed more perplexed than she usually was when looking at a crime scene. Her forehead was knit with lines of deep thought and her arms, instead of at her sides with her hands in her pockets, were crossed over her slender chest.  
  
"I know that look," he said, pointing an 'I'm on to you' finger at her.  
  
The police officers were helping the EMT crew load the body into the ominous shiny black bag and onto the stretcher. The bus was silent as it drove away. No need to rush to the ER when the person you're transporting is already well beyond saving. The flashing lights from the tops of the police cars on the scene were an annoying contrast to the near pitch blackness outside their reach and they cast eerie shadows over her and Elliot's face.  
  
"Any prints?" She ignored Elliot for the moment and directed her question to the officer closest to her.  
  
"None," he said. "At least not from the killer. Body's clean far as we could tell. No impressions in the dirt. The only fingerprints anywhere are there," He nodded at the door. "On the doorknob. No doubt they're hers."  
  
Olivia didn't doubt it either and that's what was disturbing her. However she kept silent as she and Elliot left the scene. She peeled her latex gloves off inside out and tossed them into the trash bin on the side of the road. She'd pulled back Stacy's hair to see if the mark left by whatever'd been used to strangle her angled down the same as the mark on Nance Stewart's body had. It did.  
  
The detective kept her eyes averted towards her window as Elliot drove back to the precinct; this scene being out of both their ways, he'd offered to drive so her car was still downtown. He let his eyes leave the road for a second to steal a glance her direction. He did the same motion once more as the lights from oncoming cars moved through the car interior.  
  
"Okay," he started. "You've had that look since we got on the scene. Either you just realized your oven's been on all day or..." He stole another glance. "What's up?"  
  
"It's nothing," she said without looking at him.  
  
"Uh huh," he said. "And I'm Pope John Paul."  
  
"Elliot..."  
  
"Olivia I'm your partner for God's sake, if you can't tell me--"  
  
"Just drop it, Elliot," she turned sharply to look at him. "Okay?" She held his eyes for a moment before turning back away. "I'm fine."  
  
His only reply was to sigh deeply. "Yeah," he muttered almost to himself. "Okay."  
  
Friday  
7:00 am  
Precinct  
  
The entire team comprising New York's Special Victim's Unit was together in the office bright and early the next day. Even M.E. Warner was there. They had a lot to cover. Elliot kept taking quick looks at Olivia when she arrived and pulled off her coat. Whatever had been bothering her last night was still eating at her, that he could see very clearly in the pensive look crossing her striking features.  
  
Benson slung her coat over the back of her chair and sat on the edge of her desk, crossing her feet at the ankles and leaning slightly back as her hands rested behind her palms flat on the wood. She would not meet Elliot's inquisitive stare and the slight tension that had been building between them over the course of this case was thickening.  
  
Captain Cragen came out of his office, the look in his round eyes letting everyone there know it had come down to crunch time. "Okay," he said, huffing a breath out. "What've we got? Piece by piece. Doc?"  
  
"I posted her last night, cause of death is the same," Warner began. "Strangulation. By the markings on her throat and the fact that she got dressed after she was raped, I'd testify in court that we're dealing with the same killer. No blood-type in the seminal fluid either. There was blood on her clothing though...he's gotten more violent."  
  
The captain jerked his bald head at Olivia. "Benson?"  
  
She moved her hands from the desk and crossed her arms. "Same type of person as victim number one," she reported. "Not married, lived a short distance away from her parents. This one was twenty-three. CSU didn't find any prints at the scene but her own. Mostly on the doorknob. Jason Doxey's alibi for Nance's murder clears solid. And he was out to dinner with his parents when Chester PD found Stacy's body. They're talking to her parents now. No other suspects."  
  
Cragen nodded. "Doctor," he looked at Huang. "Do your stuff."  
  
The generally quiet Asian profiler nodded back. "Now that I have something to compare Nance's murder with, we've got a much more solid profile." He put his hands in the pockets of his dark and tasteful suit jacket. "We know from Doctor Warner's findings that the killer is young, probably middle to late teens. White. Most likely holds a part time job that gives him access to electrical cords or thick wires. Possibly even has a shop class at school. Judging by his MO I'd say we can be fairly certain that he comes from a home that's anything but stable for him. No father figure. Abusive mother, maybe an older sister. So far he's killed two women, both un-married, both fairly young and both extremely independent. And he's killed them both right outside their own homes after making it appear, for them, that he's letting them go. He craves power. Enjoys the sense of helplessness he creates in his victims. Feels vindicated, maybe compensated for a lack of independence on his part."  
  
"And he's gotten more sadistic," Elliot chimed in. He dropped his feet from his desk, the rolled up sleeves of his dress shirt showing a bit of toned arm as they crossed his chest. "Prints on the   
door....Stacy was grabbing the doorknob when this guys gets her from behind."  
  
"Sick bastard," Munch grumbled, adjusting his squared glasses on his face.  
  
"Fin?" Cragen looked over at the shorter man with the shiny black curly pony-tail. "What about friends? What'd our little informant at the university have to say?"  
  
"Nothin," he muttered. "Found the guy who was supposedly harassing Nance last Saturday night. Turns out he was just a punk college sophomore that thought he owned the campus. Has a rock solid alibi. Was at a bar playing pool with friends on Monday night, didn't come home until 7:45 Tuesday morning. 15 people at the bar and the guy that owns the place remember seeing him there."  
  
Cragen rubbed his face with one hand. "Great, so... what? We're back to square one."  
  
"Maybe not," Munch came out of nowhere and stated. Sometime during Fin's monologue the phone had rung and Munch had answered. He set the receiver back in the cradle. "That was Chester PD," he said. "Just got done speaking with Stacy's parents. Stacy taught men's choir." He shared a look with the rest of the office. "West Morris High."  
  
Olivia lifted her eyebrows then turned and grabbed her coat off the back of her chair at the same time Elliot stood and grabbed his.  
  
Same day  
8:15 am  
  
"So, you going to tell me what's bothering you or am I gonna have to play twenty questions?"  
  
Olivia sighed as Elliot spoke. This time she was driving and she kept her eyes on the road. "You just won't let it drop will you?"  
  
"Liv you gotta talk. I know you. You'll just keep it inside till it eats away and before I know it, you'll be making appointments with the staff psych. It's up to you. You wanna talk to me or you wanna wait until Cragen makes you sit in front of someone you and I both know won't do jack-shit for you.." He looked out his window, his hands resting on top of his knees as his legs were sprawled slightly open in classic men fashion.  
  
The young detective rolled her neck, tilting her head from one side to the other. He had a point. She hated it when he was right. She looked over at him as she rolled to a stop at a traffic light. "This kid is probably only sixteen, seventeen years old but he's already got two murders under his belt. He's killing young women for the sole disgusting pleasure of knowing they were paralyzed with fear caused by him before they died." She looked away back out the windshield. "And going off Huang's profile, he's perfectly competent. No mental disorder, nothing. Knows perfectly well what he's doing and he doesn't care. This line of work you almost come to expect it from a man who's already finished puberty.."  
  
The light turned green and the drive continued in the direction of West Morris High. "But a kid?" Using words back in the precinct like 'killer' and 'MO' almost made it impossible to comprehend that the person they were talking about was still a child in most people's eyes. Olivia looked out her side window for a second and then back out the front. "It doesn't bother you in the least? It's sick."  
  
Elliot didn't really know how to respond to that. His partner rarely let their cases affect her like this. And when they did, they were for extremely personal reasons. He could think of only one other time that he'd seen her this unsettled over a case and even then she'd managed to put on a pretty damn good act with everyone but him...and that one was only because he already knew things about her father that not many people did and that particular case had stirred up some pretty nasty things for her.  
  
He glanced over at her as she drove and realized he'd just been given another glance at the main reason Detective Olivia Benson was so good at what she did. She was unquestionably all kick-ass cop, but moments like this revealed that she was as equally all professional and compassionately emotional woman as well.  
  
He looked at her strong profile for a minute longer before turning back to stare blankly out his own window. He said the only thing that would come to him.  
  
"We'll get him."  
  
Same day  
9:00 am  
West Morris High School  
  
"First Miss Stewart, and now Miss Morin. Dear God, what a nightmare." There was a prolonged pause. "And you mean to tell me you believe one of our students is responsible for these heinous   
crimes?"  
  
The detectives were back in Principal Mason's office and they'd just slapped him with the news that another young member of his faculty was dead.  
  
"We're looking at all possibilities," Olivia gently told him.  
  
The man just shook his head in disbelief. "I was going to tell the students this afternoon," he said. "About Miss Stewart. Now to tell them of Miss Morin's death? It won't be easy."  
  
"Mr. Mason, we want to bring this person is as badly as I'm sure you -want- us to," Olivia began, hands in her pockets. She and Elliot had remained standing this time when they'd entered the man's office. "But we need your help."  
  
"I cannot release student schedules," he said firmly, obviously thinking he knew what they were going to ask him for. "Privacy."  
  
"We understand that," Elliot said. "We're not asking for student schedules. We'd like to have a look at Stacy's room if we could though. You can play the privacy card again if you'd like," Stabler added with a tight smile. "But we're pretty sure she'd want us to invade it to bring her killer down."  
  
Fortunately for the detectives the choir room had been temporarily locked and choir classes were being held in another part of the building. Olivia was sitting at the desk while Elliot was looking through the closets of the back of the small amphitheater shaped room. The room had at some point doubled as the orchestra room because instruments of various makes and sizes were stashed in the corners.  
  
Elliot's efforts in the closets looking through rented tuxedoes and whatnot wielded nothing, as did Olivia's search of the files on the computer. It was only when Olivia began looking through the papers on the desk that their luck began to turn.  
  
They'd already been given Nance's roll book for the periods on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays that she'd taught. Olivia was thumbing through it and comparing the days to the roll book Stacy had in her top desk drawer. One pale yellow latex gloved finger slowly scrolled down a page of one book then moved to the other. Elliot was flipping through old assignments and choral music. Both detectives were silent for a good solid hour until Olivia tapped her finger on one of the roll books.  
  
"Take a look at this," she said without looking up.  
  
Elliot came over and looked over her shoulder.  
  
"I looked through both roll books. Out of all the periods during the day every day that Stacy taught and on the days that Nance taught, there are only two students who at some point during the week had both teachers. J. Doxey and a D. Fenyak." She pointed at the names.  
  
"Lemme guess," Elliot said. "J. Doxey...Jason."  
  
"First names aren't listed," Olivia replied. "But it's most likely. According to the rolls, Doxey had A.P. Euro with Nance 4th period on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and then had choir with Stacy..." she searched the top of the page for it. "..6th period all week. Fenyak had Nance 1st period on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and then choir with Stacy 5th period all week."  
  
Olivia looked up at her partner, the wheels turning in her head visible through the look in her eyes. "If J. Doxey -is- Jason...then either his alibi for Nance's murder wasn't so solid and his parents were lying about him being with them the night Stacy was murdered..."  
  
Elliot thumped a finger on the name of D. Fenyak. "...or we've just found ourselves a new suspect," he finished Benson's statement for her.  
  
[End Part 3]

  
Same day (Fri.)  
1:45 pm  
West Morris High School  
  
They were coming to a road block with their new lead and they knew it. They had records showing that two students had both Nance Stewart and Stacy Morin during the week. They still hadn't found whatever'd been used to strangle the two woman but according to Huang they were looking for someone who had access to electrical wires, extension cords and the likes, but they also knew they weren't going to be able to obtain J. Doxey and D. Fenyak's schedule to see if either student had a shop class.  
  
After a lengthy discussion with each other over their next course of action, as well as with a quick cell phone call to Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot to cover their legal options, the detectives found themselves sitting in a school counselor's office. They were armed with a plan to get around using a schedule to find out what kind of other classes the two students had during the day.  
  
"I haven't worked here very long, detectives, so I didn't know Miss Stewart or Miss Morin very well...but it's still always a shock to learn that people you know even only briefly are dead." The woman sitting across the room from them was dressed in sleek pants and a business dress type jacket with her bright red hair neatly pinned in a French Twist behind her head. She couldn't have been more than 30 years old. Her nameplate identified her as Sandra Finelli.  
  
"Thank your for seeing us," Olivia said. She didn't know how far she and Elliot would get. As a counselor, anything that passed between Sandra and the students was privileged information and the detectives would have no way of getting past that. "Two students are currently under investigation for the murders," she continued. "A J. Doxey and a D. Fenyak. Now, we understand that sessions with students are confidential, but anything you could give us that won't compromise that would be appreciated."  
  
Finelli crossed her legs and smiled at the two detectives. "Detective Benson, I'm an academic advisor," she said. "Not a child psychologist."  
  
"What d'you mean....you saying you can't tell us anything?" Stabler asked, losing patience with the lack of speed in which this case was coming together.  
  
"No, Detective Stabler. It means that my relationship with the students is just to help them pick their classes each year," she corrected his assumption. "I find out what their goals are so that come time for registration, their choice of courses will be most beneficial to them in the long run. My 'sessions' with the students are not in any way psychological." She looked from one to the other. "I'd like to help in any way that I can."  
  
Elliot shared a look with Olivia. Things were definitely going better than they'd thought. And they'd only just started the interview.  
  
Olivia handed a slip of paper across the desk to Finelli. Both students' names were written on it. "What can you tell us about them?" she asked.  
  
Sandra looked at the names briefly and then set the lined yellow paper on the desk. "There's only one J. Doxey at this school," she stared. "Jason. 11th grader. Nice young man, nice family. Very quiet."  
  
"He didn't seem all that upset when we told him about Nance's murder," Elliot offered.  
  
Sandra shook her head. "He wouldn't," she confirmed. "At least not while you were there. He's not the kind of boy to wear his heart out on his sleeve. He's appeared more on the shy side when he's come to me for course help."  
  
"What kind of classes did he generally pick?" Olivia asked.  
  
Finelli thought for a moment. "He loved choir," she supplied without either detective having told her that they knew two of his classes. "He tended to lean more towards the artistic side of the spectrum. Foreign language, creative writing, drama. Those types of things."  
  
Olivia paused before asking her next question. Jason Doxey was looking less and less like their man. "What about the other student?" she finally asked.  
  
"There are two D. Fenyak's here," Finelli stated. "But only one of them I can think of I believe would be who you're investigating. Daniel Fenyak, 10th grade," she said without giving the detectives time to ask who the other D. Fenyak was. "Fairly quiet. Been in a little bit of trouble for having only been in high school a year. His mother usually came with him for registration."  
  
"And what's he like?" Elliot pressed.  
  
What she said first off set the perp alarms in Olivia's head ringing loudly. "Took a lot of hands-on type classes. A little more industrial than Jason. Math. Computer science. Auto mechanics. But he didn't really seem to be too happy about having to sign up for the shop class," she added almost as an afterthought. "But the mother wouldn't let him enroll in choir if he didn't. She seemed pretty controlling."  
  
The look on Elliot's face let his partner know that the alarms that were going off inside her head were also ringing loud and clear inside his. Olivia mentally scratched Jason off her suspect list as she addressed the woman in front of her.  
  
"Mrs. Finelli, you mentioned that there were two D. Fenyaks here," she reminded the woman.  
  
Sandra nodded. "Deann Fenyak," she said. "Senior. She's Daniel's older sister."  
  
Same day  
3:50  
Precinct  
  
"He's our man," Elliot said after relating everything he and Olivia had learned at the school that day. "I know it." They'd stayed a bit longer to speak with the shop instructor and had learned a little more about Daniel's family life from him. Apparently Daniel confided in this shop class teacher and had told him things, things that Finelli hadn't known. And seeing as the shop instructor wasn't a counselor, his information was up for grabs and completely legally gained.  
  
Elliot dropped his coat onto his seat. "Has a control freak mother who's verbally abusive and thinks his older sister is perfect.."  
  
Olivia slid into her seat and rested her arms on the desk. "He's had problems with both Nance Stewart and Stacy Morin, has a shop class and just last week he was suspended for picking a fight with another kid at school for telling him he was a 'momma's boy.' The sister probably harasses him about it too." She finished helping Elliot tick off points on Huang's profile that Daniel Fenyak matched perfectly.  
  
"So what...he's maybe not quite as do-it-yourself as his sister, his mom let's him know it on a regular basis." It was John Munch that spoke. "Maybe the sister hassles him about it too. So he flips but doesn't want to knock off his sister so he takes it out on other people in his life bothering him about his attachment to mom....probably to gain mom's approval over his sister. He rapes them to let them know he's in charge, then kills them just as they're about to get away to make sure they know how helpless they really are."  
  
"Well without a murder weapon, no prints or DNA, and no other definitive and provable evidence against him yet, we can't hold him," Alexandra Cabot stated. She pulled off her conservative black glasses and held them in one hand as her arms crossed her chest. "Everything we have against him so far is entirely circumstantial. We can't even bring him in without parental consent and if we got him in here, we couldn't question him unless the mother stayed with him the whole time."  
  
"Nothin preventing us from bumpin into him on the street and having a little chat with him though," Fin spoke up.  
  
"And you're so good with kids," Munch said sardonically with the same type of smile thrown in Fin's direction.  
  
Olivia let out a short laugh that held anything but humor. "We've got to find him first," she said. "He wasn't in school today. The mother wasn't home when we tried to talk to her after leaving the school, none of his friends outside of class have seen him since Wednesday afternoon, and the shop teacher says he's enrolled in a work study program that lets him work off campus but he doesn't know where it is..." She sighed and raked both hands back through her short hair. "This kid is barely sixteen years old and he's eluded us for nearly a week."  
  
"We might have just gotten a little closer to him."  
  
Cragen entered the room.  
  
"CSU found something else with the footprint left at Nance Stewart's place. And the shop teacher just called. Remembers where Daniel's work study is. Says the program goes from the starting time of 7th period until 5 pm at night." He handed Elliot a piece of paper with the information written on it. "Daniel'll still be there." He looked at Fin. "Go with them," he said. "See if you can't get something out of him too..." he waved his arms a bit. "Bond or something."  
  
Fin's face was flat at Cragen's jesting comment. The man was notorious for his 'ways' around troubled kids. He ignored the remark and he slid on his leather jacket anyway and followed Olivia and Elliot out of the office. Cabot had already gone, leaving just John and the Captain.  
  
"Leaves you to check out what CSU found," Cragen smiled at him with a classic 'guess what you get to do' twinkle in his eyes.  
  
Munch moved from where he was sitting on the corner of one of the desks and made for the crime lab. "Lucky me."  
  
"So that's what's really buggin you, isn't it?"  
  
"What?" Olivia turned to look at Elliot as they left the precinct to strike out for Daniel's work study...an auto parts discount junkyard in West Bellevue. She was genuinely confused by his comment and it showed in the frown on her face. They were alone for the moment, otherwise Elliot would not have brought it up. Fin actually had yet to exit the building. He had stopped and gone back to grab a 9th grade yearbook photo of Daniel, seeing as they didn't yet have one from his current 10th grade year.  
  
It had begun snowing lightly outside and Olivia tucked her maroon scarf down into the folds of her fastened coat as she waited for Fin to catch up to them.  
  
"Your little comment back in there," Elliot jerked his head in the direction of the precinct front door.  
  
Olivia just looked away and scrunched her shoulders in an attempt to keep out the cold. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said as she began to walk a few feet away.  
  
Elliot grabbed her elbow, stopping her forward momentum and turning her back around to face him. "Liv..."  
  
"Elliot c'mon." She pulled out of his grasp. "Knock it off."  
  
Her partner stared her down for a second. "It's really getting to you that we don't have this asshole in lockup, isn't it?" he prodded, knowingly nailing the source of Benson's recent moodiness right on the head.  
  
Olivia stared right back. "Doesn't it you?" she countered. "I've been at this a long time, Elliot," she said. "I've brought in grown men, would-be serial killers, rapists, you name it.. twice this kid's age in half the time it's taken me to even find him. He's already killed two women. How many more will he go after if he's not caught?"  
  
Elliot nodded, squinting his eyes against the white that was beginning to cover the ground. "So it's not bothering you that 'we' haven't brought him down yet...it's bothering you that you haven't   
brought him down."  
  
"Elliot..." Olivia huffed a sigh and looked away as she shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat.  
  
"No ..listen. I know you, now how you get. That thing you said yesterday, about me taking a break and you going at this thing by yourself....that's bullshit, okay? No one expects you to do this alone." Elliot's voice was strong but not harsh. It worried him terribly when Olivia got like this because the end result of her feeling inadequate in a case was usually her putting herself in some insane and unnecessary danger to solve it. She'd gotten herself close to killed far more times in the 4 years he'd known her than he cared to admit.  
  
"You don't have anything to prove, you got that?" She had to get it out of her head that it was some fault of hers that Daniel hadn't been caught.  
  
Luckily for her she didn't have to respond as Fin chose that moment to come out of the precinct, a copy of the yearbook photo in hand. "Wouldn't want to lose our boy in the crowds, now would we?" He tucked the photo into his jacket and climbed into the car with the two other detectives, absolutely oblivious to the conversation that had just taken place.  
  
Same day  
4:15  
Sherm's discount auto part junkyard  
  
Olivia's cell phone rang as she was shutting her car door outside the junkyard. "Benson," she said while Elliot and Fin came around the car to join her on her side of it. The snow was beginning to come down harder, turning from small wafting flakes to thick feathery tufts of white.  
  
She put a hand over her other ear as a snow plow roared past them and then when it past she hung up and slid the phone back into the coat pocket from whence it'd been pulled. "That was Munch, he just came from the crime lab. CSU took another look at the impression left in the mud outside Nance's front door. The print sunk in deeper on the left of the ball of the foot than it did anywhere else," she relayed. "Suggesting whoever left it might have a fairly pronounced unevenness to his gait."  
  
"Might have," Elliot repeated. "So either he just stepped off the front stoop wrong," he began.  
  
"Or our boy's a bit pigeon-toed and walks with a limp on the left side," Fin finished.  
  
The team definitely had more to go on by the time they crossed the slush ridden street to the office of the junkyard. A small bell attached to the door handle with a piece of kite string dinged softly as Fin pushed the door open and the three detectives entered. The change in air pressure caused snow to blow in and Olivia sidestepped the cold air to make her way to the front desk.  
  
A burly man in a down coat came out from the back, wiping his hands on a dirty red mechanic's cloth. "I help you folks?"  
  
Elliot introduced them. "Detectives Stabler and Benson, SVU. This is Fin Tutuola," he said. The three put their badges away again. "We're looking for a student who comes here in the afternoons for a work study program."  
  
Fin took out the color copy of Daniel's yearbook photo and set it on the desk. "Daniel Fenyak," he supplied. "You seen him the last couple of days?"  
  
The man set the cloth on the cluttered desk and took the picture in his work worn hands. "Yeah sure," he said nodding. "Daniel comes in on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from about 1:45 to anywhere around 5:30, 6." He looked up from the photo. "He in trouble?"  
  
"We'd just like to ask him a few questions," Olivia said, conveniently omitting their reasons for looking for him.  
  
That seemed to satisfy the man because he simply nodded his head. "Daniel's here today," he said. He pointed out the door. "Just across the parking lot there. We got a client coming in for some fan belts to restore a car. Daniel's pulling them. Should find him somewhere towards the front of the yard."  
  
The snow, were it possible, was coming down even harder than before, covering the scrapped vehicles in the junkyard and making it almost impossible for the detectives to see more than a few yards in any direction. The junkyard was cordoned off with 6 foot chain link fence that shrieked noisily when Fin pushed one of the gates open. At first the three of them just stood there while the snow dusted their shoulders and blew down the necks of their coats. A moment later a dark head blurred from precision by the snow popped up from behind an '87 Ford pickup 9 or 10 yards in front of them and to their left.  
  
Olivia made the first move as the young man spotted the three detectives. She thought she recognized him from the photo, but she couldn't be absolutely certain. She didn't think Elliot or Fin could be either. She pulled out her badge as she walked a few feet forward. "Daniel Fenyak?" she called.  
  
The man, now obviously recognizable as Daniel Fenyak, must have known that cops would be looking for him by this time. He spun away from the hood of the pickup and bolted in the opposite direction.  
  
The three members of SVU wasted no time in pursuing him. Olivia was the first to take off after him. She stashed her badge as quickly as she could while keeping a trained eye on Fenyak. Elliot and Fin were right behind her, and then suddenly beside her as they caught up.  
  
"NYPD Daniel, stop!" Elliot hollered.  
  
Fenyak didn't slow down, he ran faster and harder and then suddenly he ducked out of sight, dodging from the main path down the center of the yard to weaving between the car and truck frames on the side. The three detectives followed his trail as closely as they could but the snow made adequate traction nearly impossible. They got to where Daniel had appeared to slip into the middle of the yard and suddenly the situation turned from a footchase to the beginnings of a firefight as a bullet sliced through the air and ricocheted as it pinged off the hood of the car directly to Elliot's right.  
  
"Shit!" Fin cursed, diving to his knees and drawing his sidearm to bear.  
  
Elliot instinctively threw an arm over Olivia's back as the two of them ducked, both of them nearly sprawling into the snow face first.  
  
"Son of a bitch's armed!" Elliot exclaimed as he cautiously got to his knees.  
  
He and Benson yanked their pistols from their holsters at the same time as they crouched behind the car the first bullet had hit. "Daniel, we just wanna talk to you!" Elliot called out. No reply came back as the three officers huffed in adrenaline filled action. It was clear they weren't going to find him crouched behind the car together as they were so with silent nods they divided and each took their own direction.  
  
Olivia stood carefully, sweeping her gun right to left as she scoured the area quickly in all directions out in front of and to either sideof her. She could see Elliot to her left and Fin a bit behind and to her right. Her breathing came fast but controlled as she moved forward. "Don't make this worse for yourself Daniel," she called into the junkyard. "Don't add this to your record!"  
  
There was no answer.  
  
The three moved systematically towards the back of the lot. The thick blanket of snow on the ground as well as the continuing storm around them muffled noises and the lights reflecting off the natural white drape turned everything around them into a pale yellow haze of confusion.  
  
"I don't see him..." Fin said loudly, making sure both Olivia and Elliot could hear him.  
  
"Daniel!" Elliot bellowed.  
  
"Where the hell is he?" Olivia shouted almost at the same time.  
  
The situation was getting more dangerous with each second that passed.  
  
"Fin, you got him?" Elliot called across Olivia's position.  
  
"Don't see him," Fin came back. "I...shit.."  
  
There was a suddenly flurry of snow and a churning of feet as Daniel scurried from where he was crouched not more than 15 yards directly in front of Benson and sprinted forward away from them. He ducked between cars again just seconds after running.  
  
"Dammit!" Olivia swore. She'd had him sighted until he'd hidden again and she raised the barrel of her pistol up a bit before repositioning and moving on.  
  
"Spread out," Elliot ordered and the three of them fanned out further spread one to the other.  
  
Tense silent seconds passed, each detective straining to see through the snow and dismembered automobiles. Nothing could be heard besides the heaving breath of each of the individual officers   
searching for Daniel Fenyak. 2 minutes passed.  
  
Then 4.  
  
5 minutes after Daniel had first fled, a voice called out sharply through the pressing silence. "Shit! I think I--" The statement was interrupted by the sickening and echoing crack of gunfire. Three shots rang out in rapid succession, disembodied enough by the storm to make it impossible to know who had fired on whom first. There was the shattering of glass as it was struck by something falling against it then nothing.  
  
And when the snow filled silence descended upon the junkyard lot again, two officers suddenly realized in cold fear that they couldn't see one of their own.  
  
[End Part 4]  


Same day (Fri.)  
4:35  
Sherm's discount auto part junkyard  
  
Things had happened in a terrifying burst of speed from the time Daniel had first fled to the time the last 3 shots were fired. The entire nerve shredding showdown took only minutes. Barely over fifteen to be exact. When the proverbial smoke began to clear and the shock of what had just happened began to wear away, the members of SVU pursuing Daniel Fenyak had suddenly been cut from three to two. There was a moment of complete silence in the junkyard before a voice broke the frigid air with the exclamation of a single name.  
  
"Benson!"  
  
Elliot stood still, almost paralyzed as seconds ticked by and the snow continued to fall silently around him and Fin as he waited for the response from his partner. A response that never came. He blinked, broke himself out of his trance and called out quickly to the only other detective still standing. He turned his head in that direction but kept his eyes trained on the spot he'd heard the 3 shots had come from as he walked slowly forward.  
  
"Fin, you got her?"  
  
"Negative," came Fin's terse reply. He scanned the snow covered metal landscape over the shaft of his pistol but couldn't see her anywhere. "I don't got her.."  
  
"Shit," Elliot swore loudly, his heart pounding against his ribcage and his pulse thumping in his ears. He moved closer still to the cluster of wrecked vehicles while Fin closed on that position from the other direction in the hopes of boxing Daniel Fenyak in.  
  
"Liv!" Elliot called out to his partner again, praying to God that the only reason she hadn't answered him the first time was because she was too busy cuffing Fenyak's ass and reading his rights. He waited precious seconds, straining through the silence to hear something, anything, but again no answer came back. This was turning into a surrealistic nightmare.  
  
"Dammit Olivia, answer me!" he shouted as he approached where he thought the shots had originated. He inched forward as he neared the car, breathing hard in frightened anticipation by the time he got there. He paused for a split second before stepping around the trunk, whipping his pistol to the right and pointing it at the ground. His stance fell in frustrated disappointment...there was nothing there.  
  
"Elliot..!"  
  
Stabler's head snapped around to his left as he finally got a response in the form of the low female voice that belonged to his partner. But something was wrong. The voice had been tight and the three syllables in his name spoken more pronounced than just flowing together as one word. He moved in that direction, which happened to be a little more ahead of him and to the left instead of the right as he'd thought.  
  
"Where are you? Olivia talk to me," he said loudly as he frantically searched between cars.  
  
"I... I need help..." came the reply, the words shaky and haltingly spoken.  
  
The statement stopped Elliot's blood cold. Olivia never asked for help. "Fin..." he started, hoping the other man was closer to finding her than he currently was.  
  
"I got a revolver over here!" Fin shouted to him from his right. "Blood in the snow. Fenyak's hurt."  
  
Fear raced up the detective's spine. There was no way Daniel could have been hurt unless he'd been shot, and there was no way this side of Hell that he would have been shot unless he had fired first. "Find him!" Elliot commanded. Unbeknownst to him Fin was already scouring the immediate area to where Elliot was. He had already called it in, requesting that along with backup an ambulance be dispatched.  
  
Elliot's feet slipped over the slush and the snow as he came around the long trunk of an '85 Lincoln Town Car. His breath caught in his throat as he cleared the car fully.  
  
Olivia Benson was lying on her back in the snow near the front driver's side door, her right knee bent up and leaning against the car itself, the other lying flat, bent at the knee at a 90 degree angle. One arm lay limply at her left side and her right arm was wrapped tightly around her midsection. Her weapon was resting loosely in her left hand. Her eyes were pinched tightly closed, her jaw was clenched, and her chest was heaving. Shards of glass from the car window above her that had shattered when she'd struck it glittered on her black coat.  
  
Elliot slid to his knees in the snow at her side, bile rising in the back his throat. "FIN!" he bellowed, holstering his Glock and ripping off his trenchcoat. "Get a bus!!" It was one thing to see someone who'd been shot...being in the force Elliot was used to that. It was an entirely different thing when that person was your partner. He could hear Fin speaking into his phone, the police code 11-41 clear....ambulance needed. It was the frantic repeated use of the first code however that no officer ever wants to hear in regards to one of his own. 11-99, 11-99.  
  
Officer down.  
  
"Goddammit," Elliot said savagely and then yanked his arms out of his suit jacket too. Olivia had been hit twice - once just under her left collar bone and again below her ribs on the left side. Elliot didn't stop to think about when during those two shots Olivia had gotten her shot off on Fenyak. He didn't care. The only thing he could concentrate on was the stain of crimson turning the snow beneath her pink.  
  
Olivia opened her eyes as Elliot had dropped next to her. "Elliot.." she began, her breath coming in fast and shaky as she tried to lift her head. She gasped and let her head drop back to the snow, tears of absolute and pure pain forming and slipping out from the outer corners of her eyes. A choked sob escaped her as the tears slid down the side of her face and back into her hair near her ears.  
  
"Hold still, Liv," Elliot told her. "Hold on, okay? A unit's on its way, just hang on," he crooned frantically as he wadded his trenchcoat up. He gently lifted her right hand from where it was holding her own side in a vice, grimacing as he moved her hand away. Her coat had at some point in time during the chase come undone and Elliot could see the wound clearly as blood from it had already soaked that side of her pale blue shirt. Elliot pressed his wadded trenchcoat into Olivia's side.  
  
Fin's voice carried to them from a few cars away. "Elliot I got him," he said of Daniel.  
  
"Where the hell is that unit!" Elliot shouted back to Fin over his shoulder as he pressed his suit jacket with his other hand over Benson's shoulder.  
  
Olivia obviously was doing everything she could not to cry out in pain as Elliot pressed his clothes into her side and shoulder. It hurt like hell. "Shit.. Elliot," she breathed. The hand that had been gripping her side was now clenched into a bloodstained fist in the snow near her head. "He .. flanked me," she said. "I...didn't even see him...until he'd already fired. Couldn't get a...a shot off fast enough," her breaths were was fast and shallow and her lips had about as much color to them as chalk.  
  
"No," Elliot objected. "No Liv, you got him, Fin's with him now. You did good. Just take it easy.." Elliot looked up as sirens sounded close by. He could see the lights from the patrol cars flashing and could just make out the top of the ambulance as it rounded the corner heading down the short street to the junkyard. He looked back down and his heart lurched. Olivia's eyes were closed.  
  
"No no no...Liv?" No response. "Olivia, c'mon, open your eyes," he said a bit more forcefully, heaving a sigh when they flickered back open. She was shivering and Elliot bent closer, trying to shield her as much as he could from the snow that was still falling. He didn't know if she was shaking because of the cold or because of the onset of shock. Neither were very good considerations. "Hey, you gotta keep your eyes open," he ordered while he pressed his coats against her. "The unit's here, they're right outside the yard. You have to stay awake till they get to us." He stared her down hard. "You keep your eyes open you hear me?"  
  
Benson nodded firmly, her features creased in shock and pain.  
  
Elliot knew she was trying but the red still seeping into the snow underneath her coupled with the glassy look invading her hazel eyes told him she was quickly losing the battle. "Fin!" he shouted.   
Tutuola was still a few rows of cars away..he couldn't leave Fenyak alone until the back up arrived. "Fin, I gotta get her outta here."  
  
"The bus is here!" Fin shouted back. "They're in the yard!"  
  
"Screw it," Elliot said after a moment's contemplation. They were in a maze of falling snow and rows of broken down cars, it could feasibly take the rescuers 15 minutes or more to actually reach them once they entered the lot. Olivia didn't have that kind of time.  
  
"Hang on, Liv," Elliot said to his partner, whose eyes by this time had closed once again. He bent low to her body, slipping one arm behind her shoulders near her neck and sliding the other under her knees. He gingerly scooped her up off the snow and then stood slowly and carefully, making sure that he pressed her as close to his chest as possible to keep his coat and suit jacket against her side and shoulder. She hung limp in his arms, one arm hanging down in front as he moved from behind the town car and towards the emergency response team. The time between when Fin had called for back up and when they arrived seemed like hours when in fact the officers and ambulance arrived less than 5 minutes after the dispatch was broadcast.  
  
"I need help!" he hollered as he jogged as quickly as he dared down the slushy path down the middle of the junkyard. "Got an officer down, she's been shot!"  
  
He met three EMTs halfway and stopped as they swung the stretcher around perpendicular to Elliot's legs so that he could lay her down more easily. They helped slide her from his arms to the bed as a couple more EMTs from another arriving unit ran past them to meet up with Fin, who was hauling a handcuffed and limping Daniel Fenyak in front of him. A small plastic baggie containing the revolver he found next to the kid was in his other hand.  
  
Fin let the other cops take charge of Fenyak, practically shoving the teenager into their hands, and then he followed Elliot as he jogged after Olivia. They were stopped at the exit gate of the junkyard...protocol dictated that their statement be recorded before they left the scene. "Where's she being taken?" Elliot demanded as he watched the crew load her into the back of the bus and slap the door after they'd shut.  
  
"Bellevue," one officer told him. He nodded at the front of Elliot's dark gray dress shirt. "You hurt detective?" he asked, lifting a gloved hand and waving one of the EMTs from the other unit over.  
  
"Elliot," Fin got his attention with a hand on his arm.  
  
Stabler blinked and then looked down. His stomach and part of his chest was stained red from when he'd picked Olivia up out of the snow. He looked back up, his eyes tracking the departing emergency unit as it left the junkyard, sirens screaming.  
  
"What? Ahh...no. No," he said, still breathing a bit hard from the entire ordeal. Fin handed the bag containing the revolver to another officer and his eyes followed Elliot's as the man spoke again, almost to himself.  
  
"It's not mine."  
  
Same day  
5:45 pm  
Emergency room lobby, Bellevue Hospital  
  
After giving their statements to the other cops that had shown up in the junkyard Elliot and Fin had driven straight to the hospital. The lobby sized waiting room off the emergency room was surprisingly deserted for a Friday. Then again it was only a quarter to 6 in the evening. The place wouldn't begin to fill up until well after 10 pm.  
  
Fin was standing in the corner by the fish tank, on the phone with Cragen back at SVU headquarters to update him on the situation. Elliot was sitting in a stiff chair, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees, his hands clasped together in front of him as his head bent low. They hadn't yet heard anything about Olivia and the silence in the waiting room was stifling. Knowing how much closer personally Fin and Elliot had just become to the case, two of the cops that had shown up on the scene back in the junkyard were with Fenyak now.  
  
Fin eventually closed his cell phone and came back to sit across from Elliot. He dropped into the plastic chair and crossed his arms. He scrutinized the man in front of him for a few minutes. "She'll make it." It was all he could think to say.  
  
Elliot sighed and rubbed his face before sitting up and leaning against the back of the chair. "Yeah," he replied.  
  
Fin leaned forward. "Hey," he started firmly, bracing his arms with his hands on his knees. "We've both seen her pull through shit before," he said. "Olivia's as tough as they come."  
  
Elliot didn't respond to that and Fin didn't say anything more. It was obvious that Stabler didn't want to talk about it. The stains on the front of his shirt were enough of a reminder of what had just taken place.  
  
Both detectives fell silent again. The only thing that could be heard was the ticking of the clock on the wall and the clicking of the keyboard a young technician was using as she sat behind one of the admittance cubicles. The minutes crawled by. 15 minutes turned to 45, 45 minutes crept into an hour, and hour stretched lethargically into two, and then finally at nearly 8 pm a fit man in mint green scrubs pushed open the swinging double doors that led into the ER itself.  
  
"Detectives?" he addressed them.  
  
Elliot and Fin stood at the same time but it was Fin who spoke first. "How is she? Good news, doc..." he added, his voice carrying a tone warning that there'd be some serious hell to pay if what he said was anything but good news.  
  
The doctor sighed and motioned to the chairs lining the wall. "Let's sit down," he suggested. They took seats in the corner so as not to be disturbed more than was avoidable.  
  
"I don't know how much I can tell you at this point," the doctor stated. "Detective Benson was critical when the emergency crew brought her in. We managed to get her stabilized but she's still   
critical and in surgery as we speak. The wound to her left shoulder was clean, the bullet went straight through and only chipped the edge of her collar bone instead of shattering it as most injuries like that will do. It was close, detectives," he added seriously and with a shake of his head. "An eighth of an inch lower and that bullet would have pierced her aorta."  
  
"But...?" Elliot pressed him to move forward.  
  
"It was the second shot she sustained that's concerning us," the doctor obliged him by moving on. "With injuries to the left side of the body like this, the greatest concern is that the spleen has been damaged. If the spleen is punctured or ruptured a patient can bleed to death internally in minutes. Now, we don't think that's the case here but the bullet is lodged in that region so we're being as cautious as we can. I won't know anything more until the attending surgeon contacts me when he's out of the OR and that could be anywhere from the next 30 minutes to another two or three hours from now."  
  
"Will she live?" Elliot asked stiffly.  
  
"Detective, it's going to be touch and go for the next couple of days," the man said. "I can't say right now whethe--"  
  
"Yes or no doc," Elliot interrupted him sharply, his temper barely beneath surface level. "That's all I wanna know."  
  
The doctor stared back at him for several silent seconds before responding. "I don't know," he said honestly. "The next twenty four hours after surgery will be the most telling." He stood. "I'm sorry detective, but we just won't know anything more definitively until that time. I suggest you go home, get some rest tonight. You won't be able to see Detective Benson until morning. If anything changes during the night, we'll call." With that he turned and headed back into the ER, the doors swishing in opposition against each other behind him.  
  
"Hey, where you going?" Fin asked as Elliot suddenly stood and stormed after the doctor. He stood as well and followed him. "Elliot!"  
  
"Gonna have a little chat with Fenyak," Elliot replied without looking back. He shoved the doors to the ER open and turned left down the short hall that led into the area were patients were assessed.   
  
Daniel Fenyak was still dressed in his street clothes and was sitting handcuffed to a bed in one of the small curtained 'rooms' of the ER. His right pant leg was rolled up to the knee and his ankle   
where Olivia's shot had struck him was wrapped in gauze. The sight made Elliot's temper flare into a near blinding rage because he understood what the location of Daniel's injury implied. Olivia wouldn't have just shot him in the foot if he'd fired at her, she would have hit him squarely which meant his first shot had already brought her down. She'd hit him in the ankle from the ground and then the bastard had shot her again as she was already lying in the snow.  
  
Daniel tensed as Elliot approached and the officers sitting guard with him stood. "Detective.."  
  
Elliot pushed past them and grabbed a fistful of Daniel's shirt, hauling him an inch or two off the bed. "You little son of a bitch," he snarled, veins in his neck standing out as blood pounded in his head.  
  
"Hey! Cool down," Fin grabbed his arm, tried to get him to back off but Elliot ignored him.  
  
"You'd better memorize this face pal," he continued, right up in Daniel's face. "Because if that detective in surgery right now dies it'll be the last one you see. She doesn't make it, I'll be the first cop in NYPD history to be shoving the potassium chloride up your arm myself."  
  
Fin pushed back on Elliot's chest. "Elliot, back off," he said firmly, knowing if Elliot made much more of an incident of this he'd be suspended.  
  
Elliot held on to the front of Daniel's shirt a second longer. Then he released him and shoved him back to the mattress in disgust.  
  
"Just be cool." Fin held a restraining arm against Elliot's chest to make sure that he didn't fly at the kid again.  
  
Elliot stared Daniel down for a second or two longer before he shrugged off Fin's arm and turned away, huffing off down the hall and out of the ER. Fin followed him closely but didn't say anything as they left the ER and headed outside to the car.  
  
Saturday  
7:30 am  
Intensive Care Unit, Bellevue Hospital  
  
Elliot was at the hospital as soon its visiting hours were open. His eyes sported dark circles and he hadn't taken quite as much care in his dress as he usually did. He hadn't slept at all during the   
night. He'd laid awake, half expecting the phone to ring and have it be the hospital calling to tell him his partner was dead. His wife, Kathy, had been very understanding and even offered to come with him today. She knew how close knit the two were...in fact she'd met Olivia before and had found her nothing but pleasant and amiable.  
  
As it was, no phone call came. A quick call before leaving the house had confirmed Elliot's hopes. Olivia had made it through surgery around 10 pm yesterday and pulled through the night and had been admitted to the intensive care unit on the 3rd floor.  
  
The halls were relatively quiet as Elliot left the elevator on the 3rd floor and walked through the push doors that led into the ICU. All of the rooms on this floor had glass for walls so that the patients could be watched at all times from the nurses' stations. Of course there were drapes that could be pulled across that glass for privacy reasons but this morning the drapes hanging in room 309 were pulled back and Elliot could see through the glass clearly.  
  
He stopped at the nurse's station in the middle of the hall. "How's Detective Benson?" he asked after he showed his identification.  
  
The nurse looked into the room briefly before looking up at the man standing at her desk. "She's still unconscious," she reported. "She hasn't regained it since last night but..." she offered a smile. "She's holding her own. It's always a general rule up here not to get your hopes too high," she advised. "The first fourty eight hours are always the hardest. But if she's made it even this far the worst may be over."  
  
Elliot nodded and then stashed his badge and crossed the hall. He paused outside the door for a moment then entered the room quietly, almost afraid that he'd wake the person lying on the bed that was parked in the middle of the sterile room. He walked silently to the bed and stood at its side looking down at the person lying there.  
  
The detective he saw now was a far cry from the headstrong and passionate woman he worked with. She lay still, her left shoulder bandaged in thick gauze dressing. An IV line was taped to the back of her right hand, an automated blood pressure cuff was around her upper arm, and lead wires from the EKG pads adhered to her chest were poking out from the top of the hospital gown and strung up to meet the monitor, which beeped slowly but steadily at the head of the bed. While her body fought to heal itself her SATs, or oxygen saturation levels, were hovering below the limit required to allow a patient to breath on their own so she had been hooked to a respirator to aide her. It hissed softly on the other side of the bed as the blue ribbed tube down her throat pumped extra oxygen into her lungs. A thin robin egg blue hospital blanket had been pulled up to just above her hips, leaving space for doctors to check the incision in her left side without having to disturb her by moving the blanket out from under her arms.  
  
Elliot stood silent, the hushed voices from the nurses station and the noise from the machinery in the room surrounding him as he watched his partner fight for her life. He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. He had never felt more helpless in his life. For 4 years now he'd helped Olivia Benson fight crime and injustice. Had been right alongside her. But now... Now all he could do was watch from the sidelines as she waged war with death. A war that was very likely she might not win.  
  
The detective watched her for another minute or two longer before deciding it was time to leave. There was nothing he could do for her now but to continue with the work they'd been doing before Daniel Fenyak had ruined life as the members of SVU knew it. He had to go on in her place, had to make absolutely certain that Fenyak would rot not only for the murders of Nance Stewart and Stacy Morin, but also for the attempted murder of a New York City police officer.  
  
Elliot tugged at the corner of the blanket, pulling it a little bit higher in the only act of comfort he knew how to offer at this point. He didn't say a word as he turned and left room 309. What was there to say? He was silent as he left the ICU and headed down the hall and into the elevator. His resolve to see Fenyak burn for this strengthened as he exited the elevator and headed from the lobby of the hospital out into the parking lot.  
  
He drove to the precinct with nothing to offer the rest of the team but the hope that if Olivia fought this battle as stubborn and passionately as she fought every other one thus far, she'd be just fine.  
  
Same day  
8:00 am  
Precinct  
  
"What are you doing here, Stabler?" Captain Cragen asked as Elliot came into the office and threw his coat on his desk.  
  
"Far as I know I still work here and last I checked, Saturday wasn't my day off," Elliot replied. "What've we got?" he asked quickly changing the subject to get focus off of him. He knew if he didn't, the questions would turn to his mental state right now and that wasn't something he was willing to divulge.  
  
Cragen sighed. Damn his people could be so bull-headed. "Not much. We still haven't got the damned murder weapon Fenyak used with Stewart and Morin," he reported. "Fenyak's in county lockup right now, Munch and Fin are having a little talk with him. Mother's throwing a fit. Went absolutely apeshit last night when we brought Daniel in. Pretty much confirmed Huang's theory that he comes from an abusive household. Called him every name in the book synonymous to worthless."  
  
Elliot rubbed the back of his neck with one hand as he dropped into his chair. With no murder weapon, no prints, and no DNA, which was pending on the condition of getting enough evidence to make clear obtaining it was necessary, making a solid case against this dropkick was going to be almost impossible. Elliot sighed and leaned his head back, rubbing his face with both hands.  
  
Cragen looked his detective over quietly for a moment or two. His voice softened a little and he crossed his arms. "How is she Elliot?" he asked, knowing full well where he had been before coming here.  
  
Elliot let his hands drop from his face into his lap. He'd pieced together the shooting himself last night. "Olivia got a couple of rows a head of us," he started. "Fenyak came around on her right,   
fired before she even saw him. Hit her in the side. She goes down but can still fire so she hits him in the shin. Asshole shot her again in the shoulder to make sure she couldn't use her gun again, then drops his revolver before trying to get away."  
  
The captain nodded. Then he sat on the corner of Elliot's desk and looked down at him. At the moment he didn't rightly care how the event had happened. No one here did. Their concern was the person involved. "How is she, Elliot?" he repeated slowly.  
  
Elliot picked up a pen and flipped it between his fingers over his knuckles. He didn't look up. "Doctor's don't know if she'll pull through to tomorrow," he finally answered. He stopped twirling the pen and tossed it end first into the porcelain mug at the top of his desk.  
  
Same day  
9:15 am  
Office of SVU Bureau Chief  
  
"You're going to have a tough time pinning murder on Daniel Fenyak, Alex." Elizabeth Donnelly looked up at the young blond attorney in her office as she stood from her seat. "No murder weapon, no prints, no DNA, and no witnesses. You don't even have enough substantial evidence against him to get a subpoena to obtain DNA."  
  
Alexandra Cabot began putting papers back into her small briefcase. She'd just come out of a very long meeting with the chief and it hadn't gone very well. The older woman had let Alex know none too subtly that this case could take months to go to trial. She snapped her brief closed. "I'm not trying to make a case for murder against Fenyak," she stated strongly. "But I do have enough evidence to put him away for the attempted murder of Olivia Benson," she added. "So fortunately I don't have to make that capital murder charge yet. He can rot in prison on the attempted murder charge while I get the evidence I need to get the death sentence I want for the murders of Nance Stewart and Stacy Morin." She yanked her briefcase off the other woman's desk and turned towards the door.  
  
"Alex..."  
  
Cabot stopped with her hand on the doorknob. "What?" she asked curtly, her head turned only slightly back around so she didn't have to look directly at the chief.  
  
There was a pause. Tempers were short and tensions were running high around the precinct in the aftermath of Benson's shooting. There was a soft sigh and then Donnelly spoke a bit more gently. "You nail this kid's ass to the wall for attempted murder and I'll do everything short of selling my soul to help put him away for the rest. But understand, Alex, that without a murder weapon, getting a capital murder charge to stick will be virtually impossible."  
  
Alex silently considered her boss's statement. She turned back around to face the other woman. "The revolver found at the junkyard has already been tested by the ballistics lab and been unquestionably proven to be the one used to shoot Detective Benson. Daniel Fenyak's fingerprints are all over it and I have eyewitness testimony from both detectives Tutuola and Stabler." She opened the office door. "If Olivia dies, I'll have a murder weapon and all the evidence I need to put him away for life."  
  
Donnelly had nothing to say to that as Alex held her eyes. They stared at each other for a second longer, then Cabot turned around and left the bureau chief's office, letting the door click shut behind her. 

  
[End Part 5]

  


Monday  
9:30 am  
Precinct  
  
Elliot arrived to work later than he normally did on Monday mornings because this was not a normal Monday morning for him. His time after work on Saturday and all of Sunday had been divided between being home with his wife and girls and driving to Bellevue to be with his partner. He tried to remain optimistic but the entire ordeal was wearing him down. Though Olivia had been taken off the respirator late Sunday night, she still had not regained consciousness since Friday afternoon.  
  
Elliot said goodbye to his wife before shutting the car door. She was taking the car to the shop today so she had dropped him off. The morning was crisp but not terribly cold and Elliot had to squint to keep the early glare of the sun at bay as he entered the precinct. He shrugged out of his coat as he neared his desk.  
  
"Don't say it." He pointed a finger at Cragen. If he heard 'what are you doing here?' one more time this weekend, he was going to throttle someone.  
  
Cragen just held up his hands in mock surrender. He knew Elliot too well and believing the detective would take some advice and take a break was folly. Stabler never quit until a case was solved and shelved. And with the direction this particular case had taken, Cragen knew Elliot wouldn't slow down until either Olivia pulled through completely or Daniel Fenyak was formally charged with the murders of Nance Stewart and Stacy Morin. Probably not until both happened.  
  
Elliot pulled out his chair and dropped into it. He glanced across the path down the middle of the office to the desk directly opposite his. The lamp was off but the chair was slid part way out from under it and a file was still open on top, a black Bic pen lying uncapped on the spread of papers. It was as if the person who occupied that desk had just stepped away for a moment and Elliot had to stop himself from asking why Olivia wasn't at work yet. Her desk had been untouched since Friday morning, everything lying exactly as she'd left it before the junkyard. He flicked his eyes away from the ominously vacant work space.  
  
"Tell me something good, Captain," he said rolling his sleeves up halfway. He needed some good news regarding this case or he was going to lose it completely.  
  
"In a minute," Cragen replied. "How is she?"  
  
Elliot sighed. "Stopped by before coming in," he said as if his boss needed to be told where he'd been. "They think she'll probably come out of it on her own soon. Docs took her off the respirator last night."  
  
Cragen nodded. "That's good to hear," he said. "How're you doing?" He was being pressed by his direct superior to force a psychological evaluation on Stabler. It was never easy to witness the shooting of a human being. It was damn near destroying to witness the same act of violence against someone you cared about.  
  
Elliot rubbed his face with one hand. "I just wanna see this asshole rot," he said. "I don't care on what charge."  
  
"That may be sooner than we thought." Munch came into the office with Fin right behind him.  
  
Elliot looked to Cragen to verify, which he did. "Tried to call you last night but your cell was off."  
  
"I can't have it on when I'm at Bellevue," he said. He looked from Munch to Fin then back to Cragen. "What? What's happening? Talk to me."  
  
Fin obliged. "Fenyak's at Strikers right now and was looking to stay there all week but Alex pulled some strings with Donnelly Sunday morning," he said. "Case goes to trial this afternoon. One o'clock."  
  
Same day  
1:15 pm  
Trial part 15, county courthouse  
  
Elliot entered the courtroom a few minutes after deliberations had already begun and stood near the back. He didn't want any undue attention for attending the trial of his partner's would-be assassin. He was involved enough as it was. Alex had approached both him and Fin Saturday night with the news that they needed to be on hand because they were eye witnesses in the case and would most likely be called to the stand later on. A fact neither really needed to be told. Elliot would lie his way straight into Hell from the stand to see Daniel Fenyak behind bars, oath be damned.  
  
The detective flipped his cell phone off and put his beeper on vibrate as the heavy wooden doors of the courtroom shut behind him. The first witness, a lab technician from CSU's crime lab who'd analyzed the revolver, was already on the stand being drilled by Cabot. Gina Bernardo, the public defender chosen for Daniel Fenyak, was sitting quietly next to the kid with nothing really to object to. She couldn't prove Daniel innocent. All she could do was go for some lesser charge in exchange for the confession Daniel had given earlier. Cabot apparently was trying to get the jury to see that he didn't deserve a lesser charge. But that part of this trial was over and done with. Elliot had missed those opening arguments on purpose. He didn't need Friday's event dramatized for him anymore that what he'd seen with his own eyes.  
  
"There must be hundreds if not thousands of revolvers in New York just like this one," Alex was saying. She nodded at the bagged weapon sitting on the judge's stand. She crossed her arms. "Negating that this was found at the scene, how is it that you can be so certain that this particular revolver was the one used to shoot Detective Benson?"  
  
The technician folded his hands in his lap. He had obviously been on this side of the witness stand before. His face was calm, his voice was collected, and he answered smoothly and precisely. "When a gun fires, any gun, the firing pin leaves a gouge in the end of the bullet that leaves its shaft," he explained. "Every weapon is different and leaves a mark that is totally unique to that gun alone. The mark on the bullet casing found at the junkyard matched exactly the mark on the bullet removed from Detective Benson during surgery and both marks are identical to the mark the firing pin left on test fires in the lab that were shot from that revolver."  
  
Alex slipped off her glasses as she turned to take her seat. "No further questions."  
  
The judge turned to look at Bernardo. "Your witness counselor."  
  
Elliot sighed as the petite brunette attorney stood and straightened her dress suit. Just watching this trial, even in this early stage, was infuriating. He couldn't imagine what it was like for Cabot as she tried to present the case. Olivia was spoken of as if she too were just a piece of evidence to be bagged, labeled, and archived in some dusty dank police station basement.  
  
Elliot missed what was said next as his beeper suddenly buzzed at his hip. He slid it off and looked at the display screen. He frowned when he recognized the number of the SVU direct line. He caught Alex's eyes as she was about to sit. She nodded slightly, letting him know he wouldn't be needed for some time. Elliot clipped his beeper back onto his belt then slipped from the courtroom silently and headed back to the precinct.  
  
"This had better be pretty damned important, Captain," he said as he came into the office. He set his coat on his chair.  
  
"Stow the lecture, Elliot. I'm pretty sure you wanted to be interrupted," Cragen said. "Get your coat back on."  
  
Elliot frowned. "Why? We find the murder weapon?" He could only think of a couple of things important enough to warrant his being pulled from the trial right now, that being one of them.  
  
"Bellevue just called," Cragen stated. "Olivia's awake."  
  
The statement sent shockwaves through Stabler. That was the other one. He moved lightning fast, yanking his coat from his chair and not bothering to pull it on as he left the office. Seconds later he came back and pulled open a desk drawer. He shut it and tugged open another one. "Dammit," he swore, loudly slamming the last drawer. "Car's in the shop, Kathy drove me."  
  
"Right behind you," Fin spoke up, grabbing his own car keys and coat and jogging with Elliot out of the precinct.  
  
Same day  
1:45 pm  
Intensive Care Unit, Bellevue Hospital  
  
"She woke just inside of an hour ago, detectives," the doctor on the floor informed them after Elliot stated the reason they were there. "I'm sorry we didn't call right away but I'm sure you understand..we had to make certain she was stable. I'm afraid that questioning will have to wait until she's stronger. I'm going to have to enforce this floor's visitation rules and ask that visits be limited to family only."  
  
"Her mother's dead and she's an only child doc," Fin said. "We're the only family she's got. We ain't gonna question her. We work with her."  
  
That was enough for the doctor and he relented with a nod. "Then let me at least prepare you," he said and sat them down. "Detective Benson is awake now but her body has been through some pretty heavy trauma and she's very weak. Due to the respirator tube that was inserted on Friday, her voice is going to be hoarse. It's not likely she'll be able to say much at all so I suggest you keep any questions to an absolute minimum. Keep the visit short and don't agitate her. She's a long road of recovery ahead of her, it would be wise not to exhaust her on the first day."  
  
Elliot and Fin nodded and the doctor led them from the family room of the ICU into the main hall and towards room 309. He entered first and Elliot could hear him speak very softly as he and Fin stood in the doorway.  
  
"Detective Benson, you have visitors..."  
  
The rest of what he said was lost but a moment later the doctor came out of the room, hands in the pockets of his white lab coat. "I'll be just outside," he told them. "Don't hesitate to call for me if you feel you need to. And remember, detectives, keep it short."  
  
Fin held back near the door and allowed Elliot to enter first. Olivia's left arm had been placed in a sling that not only kept her arm unable to move side to side, it immobilized it to keep it from   
moving front to back as well with straps that went around her back and secured her arm to her chest. In essence they'd immobilized her entire shoulder to allow the muscle time to heal before it was used again. The head of the bed had been raised slightly, not quite to 45 degrees, and the tube down her throat had been replaced with oxygen that flowed through a simple nasal cannula. Her face was paler than Elliot would have preferred and her eyes were glazed, but at least now they were open.  
  
"Hey," he said quietly as he came to stand next to the bed. The monitors still beeped the way they had on Friday night but somehow, with her awake, their rhythm seemed stronger.  
  
"Hey," she replied, her voice barely above a rasp whisper.  
  
"Look a lot better than you did Friday," Elliot said with a small smile. He really didn't know what else to say that wouldn't completely give away how damn good a scare she'd given him. Given them all for that matter. This had been too close.  
  
Fin moved from the door and came into the room to stand next toElliot. "It's good to see you awake, Olivia," he said sincerely.  
  
"Fin....hi." Benson offered a small and very brief smile.  
  
The two detectives found a couple of seats and took up residence. "How do you feel?" Elliot asked a bit stupidly. He could see that for himself.  
  
Olivia half rolled her eyes and swallowed. "Like I've been shot," she whispered, gaining a small smile from Elliot. " 'ow long was I out?"  
  
"What do you remember?" Fin asked, keeping his voice low in the quiet room.  
  
Olivia was quiet for a second as she pulled the event from her memory. She stared at the ceiling as she concentrated. She remembered everything, just not in very descriptive detail. "Just got to the junkyard," she started. "Came up on my right. I tried to get up...shot him in the foot. He said..." she swallowed again but it was obviously a painful action. "Tried to fire again but he....he shot first, got my arm. Said, "Let's see you shoot now," then ran." She paused, the effort to recall Friday's events clearly tiring her. She looked at Elliot. "You...put your...folded your coat up...?" She stopped, her eyes asking to be told the rest...that was as far as she could recall. True to form too, it was about that time that she had lost consciousness. "We get him?" she asked.  
  
Elliot nodded. "Yeah, we got him. Alex is in court right now."  
  
Olivia blinked. "Found the murder weapon?"  
  
Fin shook his head. "No weapon. He ain't on trial for the murders yet," he said.  
  
Benson nodded slightly, understanding what he meant. "That was fast," she said, her body still going off of what she last remembered.  
  
Elliot hesitated for a minute before speaking. "Not that fast," he said softly.  
  
Olivia frowned, feeling very disoriented. "What time is it?" she asked slowly. It must be later than she thought, possibly into late Saturday night by now.  
  
Elliot shared a look with Fin whose hands were folded in his lap. He looked back to his partner. "Olivia, it's almost 2 o'clock in the afternoon, Monday," he said gently. "You've been unconscious for about four days."  
  
Olivia closed her eyes as she absorbed what he'd just told her. It was almost incomprehensible to her. She was more disoriented than before, now. By all accounts, at least to her, it should only be Saturday night. She opened her mouth to say something but she suddenly tensed instead, her eyes clenching shut. Her body hitched forward as one's body does when they try to keep a cough inside. It didn't work and she coughed hoarsely several times. It took her breath completely away and obviously sent her heartrate out of control because several different slightly toned down alarms went off.  
  
"Hey...whoa," Elliot half stood, frightened by this turn and panicked that his telling her how long she'd been out had caused it.  
  
Fin got to his feet first. "I'll get doc," he said and quickly left the room.  
  
"Easy, Liv, easy," Elliot said, placing a staying and calming hand on Olivia's right arm. Her hand found his and grasped it tightly, pain obviously having completely taken her over.  
  
The doctor came in and went to the other side of the bed. He quickly checked the monitors then seemingly satisfied that nothing was dangerously out of bounds at the moment, spoke to Elliot and Fin. "It's not uncommon for patients that have been lying flat for several days to develop a slight cough," he assured them. "It's the body's way of keeping fluid from pooling in the lungs. In fact we encourage coughing in patients after surgeries that keep them on their back. We're watching it closely to ensure it doesn't develop into pneumonia."  
  
He turned his attention to his patient and leaned in close. "Detective Benson? Olivia?" he repeated when she didn't open her eyes the first time.  
  
She opened them slowly. Her face was void of color and she was clearly out of breath. "God that hurts," she whispered. Any sort of movement no matter how slight sent pain shooting through her shoulder and her side. She finally, but slowly, released Elliot's hand.  
  
"We've placed a self administering pain medication call button by your bedside," the doctor informed her by placing the small cylindrical device in her right hand. The tube went back off the bed and around to the head where it connected to a metal box no doubt containing morphine. "If you're in pain, push this button here," he directed her thumb to the small black button on the top. "It will make you sleepy but should keep the pain under control. Do you understand?"  
  
Olivia nodded slightly but she didn't press it. The doctor straightened and turned to the two detectives. "I'm sorry gentlemen, I'm going to have to ask that this visit ends right now. You can   
come again later tonight, when Detective Benson has had some rest." He waited until Fin and Elliot agreed before leaving the room.  
  
Fin stood and slipped on his leather jacket. "I'll call Cragen," he said, sensing the need the two had to be alone for a minute. He bent down a little and gave Olivia's good arm a light squeeze. "Get better now, hear?" he said. "We're all waitin for you back at headquarters."  
  
"Thanks Fin," Benson offered a strained smile. She watched as the man left the room and stepped into the hall heading for the elevator. Her eyes moved from the door to fall on Elliot, who hadn't yet stood up.  
  
They didn't say anything for a minute. Finally Elliot stood and came close to the side of the bed, resting his hand on the bedrail. He could see how very much in pain she was but the medication button was sitting loosely in her hand. "Just push the damn button Olivia," he said. "There's nothing you can do for this case that we can't take care of from here on out. You just concentrate on getting yourself outta this hospital, okay? Let us finish this."  
  
"Just promise me he'll be put away," she asked of him. She loathed nothing worse than to be pulled away involuntarily from cases that were hers from the beginning.  
  
"Don't worry about that," he replied. "Alex had his ass the second he pulled the trigger in that junkyard." He stopped and simply looked down at her.  
  
"What?" she inquired after a prolonged silence from him. He had an odd look on his face.  
  
Elliot shook his head. "Nothin," he said. "It's good to see you awake. Thought we'd lost you this time," he added, wisely using 'we' instead of 'I'. He was treading dangerously close to exposure and what he risked exposing he knew was completely beyond his reach.  
  
"Don't think you can get a new partner just like that..."  
  
Elliot smiled in return. Instead of replying though, he reached over the bedrail and took Olivia's right hand in his. He gave it a firm but gentle squeeze and ever so discreetly he made certain that his thumb covered over top of hers to press the little black button on the top of the device in her hand. Almost instantly the morphine began to work its magic and within seconds Olivia's eyes began to drift. Elliot leaned forward and down and tenderly pressed the lightest and most protective of kisses to her forehead. Her eyes closed fully at his proximity and remained shut after he backed away. He made sure she was asleep before reaching out and gently brushing some auburn hair from near her eyes.  
  
"I don't want a new partner," he said quietly before moving his hand away. He realized it was shaking a bit and he stuffed it into his pocket. The bond between the two was inexplicably close. He loved her, of that there was absolutely no doubt. But it wasn't the type of love one person feels towards their mate. It was stronger, went almost deeper than that. They were both as stubborn as hell and as bull headed as they came. They'd had their triumphs. They'd had their fair share of fights. They'd both claimed to hate the other on more than one occasion in the past. Olivia Benson was like Elliot's right lung and it scared him shitless to think of how close he'd come to losing her.  
  
"Kinda like the one I got," he stated almost to himself. He watched her silently for a minute longer before turning away from the bedside and leaving the room.  
  
Two weeks later  
Tuesday  
10:45 am  
Precinct  
  
"Thought I'd seen it all." Munch was sitting on the edge of Fin's desk. Alex Cabot had just come to inform them all that the jury had come back with their verdict. Daniel Fenyak had been found guilty of both aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder. It had taken a week to get him to be tried as an adult, though he'd not yet turned 18, and another full week to get him convicted and sentenced. The young assistant district attorney left the office to meet with the bureau chief.  
  
"No murder weapon, no prints, no witnesses, no DNA...and the perp still goes down for 25," John continued. "On a charge totally unrelated to the case he was being investigated for."  
  
"He'll be in for a hell of a lot longer than 25 once we get all that," Cragen added. "We've got two different jurisdictions looking for the murder weapon right now and Alex is already working on   
making a new case against him."  
  
Elliot entered the office at that moment and headed straight for his desk. He'd been at the trial and as the bailiff had cuffed Daniel Fenyak, the two had locked eyes. The look Elliot had given the teen would have been enough to send even the most hardened of criminals into a dark corner. Fenyak hadn't even batted an eye. But the look had sent its message anyway and Elliot made sure the kid knew that anyone that messed with him, or more importantly those he cared about, usually preferred prison time as opposed to the vengeance of Elliot Stabler.  
  
"You heading over there now?" Cragen asked as Elliot switched off his lamp and grabbed his car keys.  
  
"Yep. Have to be there right at eleven." He shut his top drawer.  
  
Fin dropped his feet from the edge of his desk. "It's today?" he asked incredulously, a look of slight panic washing over him.  
  
Elliot straightened, pointed a finger at Fin. "Don't mess with me Fin..." he began. "Don't even joke about it."  
  
Fin broke into a grin. "Chill Ripley," he said. "Got it covered. Called them yesterday before I left, they'll be here by the time you get back. If they're not, I get my fifty bucks back."  
  
Stabler just shook his head then pulled up his sleeve to glance at his watch. "Gotta go," he said grabbing his coat and draping it over his arm. "Better not be shittin me Fin," he called over his shoulder as he left the office in a bit of a rush.  
  
"Wouldn't dream of it," Fin called after him.  
  
Cragen just shook his head at his people's antics. Then he shooed at Fin and Munch. "All right, move it, ladies," he said. "We're on a time table here."  


"Nag, nag, nag." Munch sluggishly slid off the desk he was sitting on and followed Fin to the back hallway towards Captain Cragen's office.  
  
Same day  
11:10 am  
Bellevue Hospital  
  
"So...." Elliot walked into the room and clapped his hands together once. "Heard there's a jail break in progress." He stopped just shy of the bed and looked down with a stern expression on his face. "You know you can get five to ten for that?"  
  
Olivia looked up and then rolled her eyes. "Who told you they were discharging me today?" she asked in a tone suggesting she was going to go after that very person as soon as she found out. She'd been moved from the ICU to a normal floor a few days ago. Wednesday of the last week to be exact. She was sitting up fully in bed, her legs over the edge, dressed in loose pants and a red shirt. Another button down shirt was draped around her shoulders to keep out the chill as she couldn't put her slinged arm through the sleeve of her coat yet.  
  
Elliot shrugged. "Heard it around," he said nonchalantly. "Some people are pretty nervous that a Detective Olivia Benson was going to be hitting the streets again. Thought I'd check it out."  
  
Benson didn't give him the satisfaction of a physical response. "Y'know, that was almost funny?" she said, leaning off the edge of the bed to make a grab at a small plastic bag that her personals had been stuffed into by the nursing staff.  
  
"Lemme get that," Elliot said, bending down and grabbing the handles of the bag first. He set it on the bed next to her as the doctor came into the room.  
  
"Detective Stabler," he said with a smile. He held out his hand. "Good to see you again."  
  
"Doc," Elliot nodded grasping the offered hand in a firm shake. He'd been a regular visitor to Bellevue, showing up at least once a day, if not more than once in a given day. Nurses who hadn't seen him before had stopped asking if he was family or not nearly a week ago. He might as well have been her brother.  
  
"I understand Olivia will be discharged into your care for the immediate future," the doctor said as more of a statement of verification than anything else.  
  
Elliot nodded. "Yep."  
  
"Very well. If you'll excuse me then, I'll get the discharge instructions." The doctor left the room and Elliot braced himself.  
  
"Will I," Olivia said, throwing her partner a look. "Look, Elliot, I love that you've taken on the role of knight in shining armor and everything bu-"  
  
Elliot held up a finger. "I don't want to hear it, Liv," he said. "Doc's aren't just going to let you off on your own yet and you got no one to stay with you at your place. There's no room for debate here. Kathy's making up the spare bedroom for you as we speak. Damn near threatened a vow of celibacy if I didn't have you with me when I came home."  
  
Olivia stared up at him in disbelief. He was taking her home with him? She felt like a fifth wheel enough already as it was. "Elliot," she started. The doctor came into the room with the appropriate paperwork and stopped her protest as he handed Elliot a handful of prescriptions and began to explain to them the various post discharge instructions.  
  
Same day  
11:45 am  
Precinct  
  
"Where are you going?" Olivia asked as Elliot made a left turn suddenly instead of a right turn. "You live 18 blocks in the other direction."  
  
"I know," Elliot said. "Gotta stop at headquarters for a minute," he explained. "Got some old paperwork I need to catch up on and figured I'd just take it home where it can collect dust in a more comfortable atmosphere."  
  
Olivia shook her head ruefully as he pulled into the small parking lot and stopped the car. He got out then walked around and opened her door. "What?" she looked up at him as he stood with one hand on the door frame, the other extended down to her.  
  
"C'mon," he said.  
  
"Elliot, I can just wait in the car while you grab your things," she said.  
  
He reached down and tugged at her right arm. "You could," he said. "If I'd let you. This is New York City and I don't want you sitting in a car by yourself when you're one arm short of being able to fully defend yourself."  
  
Olivia sighed at his persistent mother-hening but finally gave up fighting him and got out of the car, with his help of course. He made sure that her coat was draped over her shoulders securely so that it wouldn't slip off as they walked across the lot and into the precinct. He made sure that he stayed slightly in front of her as they meandered to the back where SVU headquarters were located.  
  
"Ohhh....what the hell is this?" Olivia asked as they entered the office and Elliot moved to one side. She stopped walking and tilted her head slightly to one side. She tried to look annoyed but she couldn't hold back the small embarrassed smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth.  
  
Her desk had been cleared of clutter and neatly reorganized the way she liked. Her boxes were clear of paperwork and she got a nagging suspicion she knew just whose old paperwork Elliot was doing. The clutter that had been cleared away had been replaced with 4 large bouquets of flowers, each bouquet in their own holder so they could sit upright on her desk. One display even had a Mylar balloon drifting from its center. The phrase "Welcome Home" was written in blaring red on the bright yellow confettied face of the balloon  
  
"I don't know where this came from," Cragen said with an innocent shrug. "Stuff just showed up."  
  
"Guys..." Olivia didn't know what to say. She suddenly knew that she didn't need to worry about being alone any longer. Because she wasn't. She never would be. She had everything...everyone...she needed right in front of her now.  
  
Elliot smiled, mightily pleased with himself for pulling off this little surprise. "Everything's yours but the balloon," he quipped. He tweaked the petal of one of the roses from one of the bouquets. "Though Kathy may fight ya for the flowers."  
  
Olivia had to chuckle at that. "This is... Thank you," she said, another embarrassed smile flushing her face. "Guys, really. I mean that."  
  
Captain Cragen smiled. "Good to have you back with us Olivia," he said, his voice full of feeling that was unquestionably shared by everyone on the Special Victim's Unit team.  
  
Olivia simply returned the smile.  
  
It was good to be back.


End file.
